Photo of the Day: A glimpse inside Fulton St.

Where:Inside the construction of the Fulton St. Transit HubWhen: June 8, 2011

The MTA recently sent staff photographer Patrick Cashin inside the Fulton St. Transit Center to snap a series of photos of the hub in progress. The results are now up on Flickr, and we see, after years of stops and stops, that the project is moving ahead quickly. Relocated murals are in place; walkways have been built; and currently shuttered platforms are undergoing renovations.

The authority still maintains the Transit Center will be fully operational by the end of 2014, and various segments are opening up as work finishes up. By the time of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in a few months, the southbound Cortlandt St. station along the R should finally reopen, and Lower Manhattan’s transit center, albeit it with a very steep price tag, will untangle one of the more confusing subway stations around.

21 Responses to “Photo of the Day: A glimpse inside Fulton St.”

The southbound platform for the Courtland Street station along the R train will re-open on the 9/11 anniversary. The 1-train stop at Courtland Street will not be open for several years, until after the PATH station construction moves forward.

Yet somehow they never spell “Spuyten Duyvil” wrong. All one needs to do is look at a subway map if they’re not sure how to spell “Courtlandt.” Or open up a history book of NYC. There are TONS of Dutch names in the 5 boros.

I’m anxious to see — given the cost of the project – how much functionality the MTA gets out of the upper floors of the new transit center. It’s not going to be as elegant/gaudy as originally planned, but like the new PATH terminal, if you’re going to get tons of one-time federal money for underground transportation projects, it probably does the most good long-term if the money’s actually spent on work underground (you can argue about the aesthetics of the new South Ferry terminal for the 1 — it would have been nice if they had made an effort to match the Contract 2 look of the original station — but at least you can’t say they overemphasized the above-ground frills over the below ground functionality).

This (along with the new South Ferry terminal on the #1) is the most ridiculous boondoggle ever – an unconscionable waste of tax payers dollars that could have been far better used elsewhere in the system, such as for rebuilding the Flatbush terminal on the IRT Nostrand line, or reconfiguring Nostrand Jct on the IRT.

And when Fulton station is finally finished not a single additional train will be serving the station, i.e. there’s 0% increase in capacity on any of the lines involved. For all it will have accomplished, aside from years of really major disruptions of regular subway service, they might just as well have flushed all that money down the toilet.

Blame the feds. This project has been 98% funded through federal dollars explicitly earmarked for Lower Manhattan recovery projects and, more specifically, the Fulton St. hub itself. It’s political theater at its worst.

I wouldn’t lump the South Ferry IRT terminal in with Fulton St, nor call it a boondoggle. The former 1905 South Ferry station was extremely small, had one narrow exit, and was on such a sharp curve that only the front five cars could be used for boarding. The platform had huge gaps, and the station was getting dangerously overcrowded with each passing year as the population of Staten Island (and subsequent ferry use) continued to rise.

The addition of a two track terminal also increased the amount of trains on the 7th Ave Local as the backup of local trains coming into South Ferry was virtually eliminated. All around, this was a needed addition to the subway system.

I was in the NYCT schedules dept in charge of the IRT schedule section at the time the new SF terminal opened and, rest assured, there has been absolutely no increase in service. Two trains, and two train crews were added to the #1 line in order to provide the exact same level of service. With the new terminal the trains sit in SF for as much as 6 min in the peak – compared to 2 min at the old loop -, i.e. the train/crew turn around time at SF has tripled, thus necessitating extra trains and crews to run the same service.

As far as the passenger loads: we did numerous traffic checks on the line. The total number of passengers on each peak train was around 200-300 passengers max, and mostly averaging around 150, not a lot of passengers. So yeah new SF terminal was just one more costly boondoggle.

Only a fool would label South Ferry a boondoggle. There is a difference between something you think was overpriced and a complete waste of money. Ask anyone who actually uses South Ferry and they will tell you the old station was crap and caused massive delays for people bound for the Ferry. It was dangerous, crowded, and caused all kinds of problems with people darting down the platform at earlier stations to get into the first five cars. As far as Fulton Street, I think it is a great project but clearly didn’t need to cost this much and I think most New Yorkers only care about the underground aspect and we could have scrapped the big head house. That being said, it’s kind of cool that we’re getting something impressive devoted to transportation instead of just a bunch of stairs that we descend like mole people.

In an ideal world with unlimited funding for transit the new SF station would be excusable. But the passenger counts for old SF station, out of 422 active stations, put it down around 101. There were, and are many places far more deserving of a fix than old SF. Also looping the trains was a far more efficient way to turn them than changing ends in a stub end station is.

As far as how the money was spent (and I realize the money was stupidly earmarked for lower Man projects only), it would have been far better used to rebuild Flat/Nostrand terminal and/or reconfigure Nostrand Jct, as both these locations determine what level of service you can run on the 2, 3, 4 & 5 express lines. Improvements at both locations would actually mean that you could run more trains more reliably on these grossly over-crowded lines. And I’m saying this based upon many years experience in IRT road operations and also scheduling.

As far as Fulton station is concerned – if it is ever finished – well it will be a palatial station with the same crappy service running downstairs. Spending billions on cosmetics while day-to-day service delivery is slowly sliding down hill always makes a whole lot of sense. I guess the average passenger, while waiting, often longer than necessary, for the same over crowded train (as likely as not because because it got delayed by all the conflicting moves at Nost Jct) will not mind at all now that they can do so in a fancy new station.